In the wake of the October 7 attacks, comedy promoter Andy Shaw attended the Whitehall rally in London and was shocked by the miniscule number of non-Jewish people there. “I could tell who wasn’t Jewish,” he remembers, “because we didn’t know the words to the songs. Another mate of mine turned up and we looked at each other in disbelief and said ‘So it’s just us, is it?’”
Fast-forward two-and-a-half years to Golders Green and the recent ambulance arson attacks, followed by the stabbings, and Shaw decided to act. “Jewish people are feeling very alone, and it’s time for non-Jewish people to stand up… with the obvious play on words of stand-up comedy and standing up.”
So he rang comedian Andrew Doyle, with whom he runs the monthly Comedy Unleashed show at the Backyard in Bethnal Green, and they hatched a plan for a benefit gig.
Doyle agreed to fly over from the States to take part, while Al Murray and Simon Evans were approached and immediately said yes. Others soon followed – Adam Bloom, Josh Howie – and the event came together with lightning speed. Just three weeks after the Golders Green stabbings, Stand-Up For Jews was announced at the Leicester Square Theatre for June 30 and sold out within a few hours, with profits going to Jewish volunteer services in London, as well as antisemitism campaigns Stop The Hate and Our Fight.
“I couldn’t believe it sold out so fast,” Shaw laughs. “The Leicester Square Theatre tweet about the gig has got nearly half a million views now. It just struck a chord and I think there’s a huge demand for this.
“We’ll see how it goes but I’ve been inundated with comedians wanting to perform so it looks like we’re going to have to repeat it again at a bigger venue.”
Shaw agrees that not everyone wants to go on a demo and risk being kettled or coshed, but that most right-thinking people will jump at the chance to show their support in other ways, such as attend a comedy gig. “I think we underestimate the support out there. Jewish people are on their own, and it’s always the loudest voices that are heard. It just takes more people, particularly in the arts, to make a stand and people will come. There’s a huge well of support out there and it just needs the right outlet.”
The comedy industry is remarkably proficient at getting its act together at the drop of a hat, or kippah, and putting on such fundraisers. Bob Geldof notwithstanding, you couldn’t imagine the music business springing into action quite so readily.
Doyle, a renowned comic contrarian who is no stranger to controversy, feels that the 15 years he has spent pushing back against authoritarianism make him a perfect fit for the Stand-Up For Jews line-up. Speaking from Arizona, where he has now relocated, he passionately decries the rise of antisemitism in UK society.
“It’s a real red flag because we know where that leads from history. And we are seeing the mainstreaming and complete normalisation of antisemitism from people who claim to be anti-fascist and anti-racist. That’s a very disturbing situation.”
Alarmingly, and with depressing predictability, the Leicester Square Theatre’s post advertising the gig attracted a stream of online anti-Jewish hatred – so much so that they ended up having to close their replies.
Says Doyle: “I’ve never known the extent of what we’re seeing on social media at the moment.
“But the overt antisemitism in the replies, including pictures of Hitler, effectively prove the point as to why the gig is needed.”
Doyle is no stranger to cancel culture, having written books on the subject and been on the sharp end of it at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 when a Comedy Unleashed show involving Father Ted’s Graham Linehan was cancelled, not once but twice, over Linehan’s views on the trans-rights movement.
“But we were able to rearrange it outside the Holyrood Parliament within a matter of hours,” recalls Doyle. “That’s the thing about comedy. It’s very hard to stop a stand-up gig.”
Nevertheless, Jewish comic Jerry Sadowitz had his Edinburgh run cancelled in 2022 when staff at the venue found his material too offensive, while only last year comedians Rachel Creeger and Philip Simon had their Jewish-themed shows cancelled over safety concerns.
Doyle again expresses his anger over what he perceives to be the wider comedy industry’s lack of backbone.
“When Sadowitz was cancelled, all the doyens of the industry, the people who claim to be for artistic freedom, they were very conspicuously silent. I’m so sick of the cowardice,” he says.
Another of the stand-ups on the bill, Simon Evans, is unequivocal about where he stands over the rise of antisemitism in the UK and over Comedy Unleashed’s involvement in the Stand-Up For Jews night.
“Whether you’re campaigning against antisemitism or for rights in the workplace, people will try to use identity politics to divide and it’s very easy to get drawn into that Nietzschean thing of becoming the monster you fight. But I always trust Andy [Shaw] to throw a good benefit and I know it won’t just turn into some kind of let’s bomb Gaza night.”
Evans has skin in the game after discovering his biological father was not the man who raised him but Bertold Wiesner, a fertility doctor of Austrian-Jewish descent, who secretly used his own sperm to impregnate hundreds of women at his London clinic, leaving Evans with as many as 1,000 half-siblings worldwide.
He has no connection with the Jewish faith but he does feel blessed with certain Jewish characteristics.
“It does feel to me that I grew up more argumentative and questioning. I’ve met about 60 or 70 of my half brothers and sisters, and we are all highly verbal. I have a lot of Jewish mates and I’ve always felt an affinity towards them.”
Evans is also clear that he is not taking a political position by appearing on the Stand-Up For Jews bill. “You can say what you like about the government of Israel and Netanyahu or indeed Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranian regime, but there’s never any excuse for making British people feel afraid. That’s just a huge red line.
“For me it’s about kids feeling afraid when they go to school or ambulances being set on fire.
“No cafe owner should feel afraid, or worry that their business is going to be targeted on the strength of a conflict they have nothing to do with. My red line is absolutely just never ever targeting anyone for their ethnicity.’
Doyle concurs and underlines the sound reasoning behind the benefit.
“When you’ve got overt attacks on synagogues, people being stabbed for being Jewish, even mainstream commentators making excuses for antisemitic behaviour, that’s a real problem,” he says.
“And so we’re trying to draw attention to that. That’s why we’re doing it.
“One of the most powerful things you can do in the face of awfulness is to laugh.”
Stand-Up For Jews, June 30, Leicester Square Theatre. Join the waiting list for tickets at leicestersquaretheatre.com
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